Storage
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Sony's ultra-fast SD cards are designed to be abused
Not content just to have the fastest UHS-II memory cards on the market, Sony wants to have the fastest and strongest. It just unveiled the SF-G series Tough UHS-II SD cards that can handle as much pain as you care to inflict. They're 18 times stronger than standard SD cards, and "use the world's first monolithic structure with a completely sealed one-piece molding," Sony said. As such, they're bend-proof, drop-proof to five meters, waterproof and dust-proof.
US carrier promo offers free iCloud storage to iPhone upgraders
Apple isn't known for offering virtually any promos to iPhone buyers, let alone iCloud users, but it's making exceptions for both ahead of the 2018 iPhones. Reddit users have discovered a promo that lets subscribers to the four major US carriers get two months of 200GB of iCloud storage for free. The campaign is clearly aimed at iPhone upgraders -- the offer page touts the extra space as helpful for backing up all your files so that you can be ready "when your new iPhone arrives." The deal is only available for a "limited time" to new iCloud subscribers, and you'll be charged for the 200GB tier if you don't cancel before the two-month period is over.
Google Drive's expanded One plans are available to anyone in the US
You no longer have to be a paying Google Drive personal customer to use the expanded One plans. As of today, Google One is available to anyone in the US willing to pay for cloud storage. As before, it's about considerably more than offering more storage for the money. You now have access to a $3 per month 200GB plan and a more accessible $10 per month 2TB plan, but the main allure for many could be family sharing. A total of six people can access the same storage under a single bill. If you'd rather not pay for separate accounts (or just want a shared account), One makes better financial sense.
Android exploit targeted apps' shoddy use of external storage
Many mobile security flaws revolve around obvious avenues like websites or deep, operating system-level exploits. The security team at Check Point, however, has discovered another path: apps that make poor use of external storage like SD cards. While apps would ideally stick to internal storage (which Google sandboxes against outside influence) as much as possible, some apps have relied unnecessarily on unprotected external storage and didn't bother to validate the data coming from that space. An intruder could take advantage of that poor security policy to manipulate the data and cause havoc -- Check Point called it a "man-in-the-disk" attack.
Intel's first 'ruler' SSD holds 32TB
Intel has unsheathed its first "ruler" SSD, a bizarre device with a 12-inch long housing and colossal amount of storage. Intel created the new form factor last year to cram as much storage as possible into a "1U" server form factor, with optimal thermal efficiency. The DC P4500 is the first drive with that design and fits 32TB into one twentieth the space that regular hard disks would take up, while consuming a tenth the power.
Toshiba's flash chips could boost SSD capacity by 500 percent
Toshiba has started building prototype sample flash memory with the highest capacity yet, 1.33 terabits (166GB) per chip. The 96-layer 3D NAND flash chips have four bits per cell, as compared to its current-gen three-bit tech, which allowed for chips with "only" 32GB. A typical package for flash storage, containing 16 of the chips, would have an astonishing 2.66 TB capacity, opening up new possibilities for faster, higher density SSDs and memory cards.
Seagate courts PC enthusiasts with Barracuda SSD (update: pricing)
Seagate has offered SSDs for a while, but it's not what you'd call a strong supporter. Unless you're an enterprise user, you're typically either buying a hybrid drive or looking to one of the many alternatives. The company is determined to change its reputation, though: it just launched a Barracuda SSD built for PC enthusiasts. It's a relatively familiar-looking 2.5-inch SATA drive with sequential speeds up to 560MB/s and capacities ranging from 250GB to 2TB, so it won't compete with the NVMe drives that are all the rage as of late. However, the BarraCuda should be more than enough for a speedy boot drive.
You may soon store your entire media collection on one SD card
A single SD card might someday be enough to hold your entire media collection, no matter how huge it is; and it'll obviously be even faster than today's offerings. The SD Association (the group that sets memory card standards) just announced a new specification called SD Express, which adds PCI Express and NVMe interfaces to the cards, thus ramping up data transfer speeds to as much as 985MB per second -- almost doubling that of last year's SSDs. This spec can be applied to future SDXC and SDHC memory cards, but it'll require the same additional pins as UHS-II and UHS-III specs to support the extra bandwidth.
Samsung now has an 8TB SSD thanks to 3D memory tech
Data centers are about to get a lot more storage efficient. Samsung has launched the industry's highest capacity NVMe solid state drive (SSD) that packs an 8TB punch in an ultra-small footprint of just 11cm x 3.05cm -- twice the capacity of SSDs commonly used in hyper-scale server designs and slim line laptops.
Seagate's hard drive/battery fanny pack is made for VR
In addition to the major software update for the Vive Focus standalone VR headset yesterday, HTC also unveiled the Seagate VR Power Drive which, as the name suggests, is a hybrid of a power bank and a portable hard drive. This isn't an entirely new idea, of course, but it's the first of such kind designed with VR usage in mind. Specifically, this device packs 5,000 mAh of battery juice -- almost doubling that of the Vive Focus -- plus 1TB of storage space (but no speed specs yet), and it has a detachable belt clip which can be locked at every 90 degrees.
Kaspersky to move to Switzerland following latest government ban
Things are going from bad to worse for Kaspersky Labs, the Russian anti-virus software developer. The Dutch government says it's planning to phase out the use of the software "as a precautionary measure", and is proactively suggesting other companies do the same.
Google Drive's new plans bring family sharing and more options
You probably haven't had a huge reason to upgrade from Google Drive's free 15GB service, but Google thinks it can sway you with the right incentives. It's launching a new set of plans, nicknamed Google One, that give you considerably more than extra capacity. There's now a family sharing option similar to services like iCloud, for starters -- up to six family members can share a plan, each with their own private storage areas. Google is promising better support as well, with "one-tap" access to experts for Drive and other services. Previously, you needed a G Suite business account to get that kind of live help.
Samsung's latest microSD card is beefy enough for your dash cam
Most microSD cards are perfectly fine for your smartphone. Your dash cam or home security camera, however? That's another story -- that non-stop video recording can be brutal on cards that aren't designed for continuous writing. Enter Samsung with its Pro Endurance card. The new microSD range reportedly endures about 25 times longer than other "speed-focused" cards, handling up to 43,800 hours of 1080p video recording on a 128GB model. That's five years of around-the-clock use, folks. There's a chance your camera stops working before the card does.
Samsung's 970 series SSDs provide the write speeds you crave
Few would call Samsung's 960-series SSDs slow (or indeed, most any NVMe SSD), but that isn't stopping the company from refining the formula. The newly launched 970 Evo and 970 Pro drives take advantage of Samsung's developments in its 64-layer 3D flash memory and Phoenix controller (both of which have surfaced in earlier drives) to deliver performance that makes the 960s seem relatively pokey. Both the Evo and Pro can hit the peak 3,500MB/s sequential read speeds of the 960 line, but the real star is the write speed. The 970 Evo by itself is faster than the 960 Pro with up to a 2,500MB/s sequential write rate, while the 970 Pro is quicker still at 2,700MB/s.
Western Digital unveils its new 4K-ready NVME gaming SSD
While it tries to craft a microwave-assisted 40TB hard drive by 2025, Western Digital is releasing storage solutions for the nearer future. The company introduced the Black 3D NVMe, an SSD designed to run 4K and Ultra HD graphics quickly and seamlessly, which should suit gamers and high-end video producers.
Gnarbox's mobile video editing drive now comes in an SSD version
Gnarbox broke new ground in portable storage with its first drive, which let pros start editing photos and videos before they've reached a PC. But what if you still want something more powerful? Don't worry, you're covered: the company is crowdfunding Gnarbox 2.0, an updated version with an NVMe-based solid-state drive (instead of the previous model's basic flash storage) as its centerpiece. Hook up a camera through USB-C and you can back up your photos and videos at a rapid 450MB/s, which might set your mind at ease if you have a ton of footage to save. You'll also find a faster processor (an unnamed 2.4GHz quad-core Intel chip) and an OLED that lets you perform some backups without even needing your phone.
World's largest SSD capacity now stands at 100TB
That didn't take long -- just a month after Samsung released a record-setting 30TB SSD, a rival has claimed the throne. Nimbus Data has unveiled the ExaDrive DC100, which crams 100TB of 3D flash memory into a standard 3.5-inch SATA form factor. For context, that's 20 million songs (if you assume 5MB each) in a device small enough to fit into your home PC. Not that you're about to buy one, unfortunately.
Flash storage spec doubles speeds on future smartphones
Smartphones already have storage speeds that rival PCs and they're going to take another big leap soon. Standards group JEDEC has unveiled UFS 3.0, a new flash storage standard for mobile devices, Chromebooks, VR headsets and automotive devices that doubles the bandwidth of UFS 2.1 to a stellar 2.9 GB/s. That's only a theoretical maximum that real-world devices won't likely reach, however, and requires that the host device has the hardware to support it.
The first 512GB microSD card arrives in February
It didn't take long for someone to topple 2017's microSD storage record. The UK's Integral Memory has unveiled what it says it the first shipping 512GB microSD card. So long as your device can handle microSDXC (most Android phones and tablets, as well as PCs like the Surface Pro), you too can have half a terabyte in the space of a fingernail. The card's 80MB/s peak transfer speed isn't the fastest you'll find, but it should be enough for apps and recording gobs of 4K video.
Samsung's 512GB chip will give your phone PC-like storage
Samsung has begun mass production of the world's first 512GB embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS), meaning its flagship phones can now hold double what they could last year, when the company released its 256GB version. Phones with the new chips can store up to 130 10-minute UHD videos.
